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Doctor: Med school tied to Augusta

Posted: Monday, July 16, 2007

AUGUSTA - In the debate over opening an Athens satellite of Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine, no one is disputing the school is a statewide asset.

Gov. Sonny Perdue, a proponent of the move, put it this way in an guest editorial in the Augusta Chronicle: "MCG is the Medical College of Georgia, not the Medical College of Augusta." But some longtime Augusta doctors say that ignores the crucial role the city played in not only creating MCG but saving it at least three times in the last century from closing or moving.

Longtime Augusta surgeon Harry C. Sherman, whose father helped resurrect and stabilize MCG's surgery programs in the 1930s, said he was dismayed when he read Perdue's comments.

Sherman researched the school's history in library archives and wrote up a short account of the school's special relationship with Augusta. According to his account and Edward Cashin's "Story of Augusta," the school has been severely threatened three times since 1910, and each time city leaders and the medical community rallied to save it.

Based on Sherman's and Cashin's accounts:

A nationwide study of all medical schools in 1910 by Abraham Flexner of the Carnegie Foundation found substandard conditions at the Old Medical College building on Telfair Street and recommended closing the school if conditions couldn't be upgraded.

Augusta formed a citizen committee that rallied around the school, moving an orphanage to Gracewood and allowing the school to take its building on 13th Street. The city issued bonds to build a new 25-bed hospital, University Hospital, that was dedicated to teaching.

The citizen committee also raised $41,000 in a matter of months and, when Atlanta leaders started angling to take the medical school, the Augusta legislative delegation had it declared part of the University System of Georgia.

In 1933, the newly formed Board of Regents that took over the university system voted to abolish MCG. Augusta held an "indignation meeting" that started a furious lobbying effort by prominent citizens of not only the regents but Gov. Eugene Talmadge that led to rescinding the move.

A year later in 1934, however, the American Medical Association stripped the school of its "A" rating, citing inadequate support. The city was providing $10,000 a year, but the regents were faulted for not providing more state funding. City leaders again rallied and got a pledge of $125,000 a year in state support.

Joseph P. Bailey Jr., professor emeritus of medicine and a faculty member at MCG said that when he served on the Blue Ribbon Commission on the future of MCG in the mid-1990s, the amount of per capita state money for medical education was $8.57. In 2005, that amount was $7.17, he said - the lowest in the Southeast. Alabama, for instance, spends $22.75 per capita on medical education, according to figures from the Association of American Medical Colleges.